This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.

You're saying it in such way that others may think it's something bad... "

"They wait, all of them from high to low, and they prophesy crisis, which is to say they pray for it. They know the power of their weapon, and our fear of it, and even a small crisis is better than none. But what they especially dream of is a profound crisis, that anguished crisis of the spirit which tears us to pieces every thirty or forty years, one that will soften our hearts to the tall fierce strangers who stand outside the door and cry salvation. They are certain the door will open; they have no doubts at all that a time will come when the prevalence of devils will persuade us that freedom is best defended by surrendering it altogether.

And perhaps they are right. Perhaps we don't like freedom any more. Perhaps we have listened so long to the concatenation from the swamp that all unknowingly we have passed the point of no return, and now drift closer and closer to the heart of that thick, nadiral stupor in which men no longer want to be free. The midnight air stutters with the magic word, and men with pinched white faces steal through the street. They have long memories and the shortest tempers you ever saw, and they fondle guns instead of girls. Yet I do not dread them as much as I fear the others – the silent ones, the contented, the alienated, the frightened, the acquiescent."